SPOILER WARNING: This article contains spoilers for "Game Of Thrones."
For what feels like forever I've been part of multiple fandoms, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Shadowhunters were some of the earlier franchises I got into when I was in middle school. It was during that time that I found online communities full of people that were just as passionate about these fictional characters as I was.
One of my favorite things about fandoms are all the fan theories. In long series like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones we have to go periods of time where there is no new content, we have to wait for the next book or episode to come out. But rather than just waiting and carrying on with life, fans will often discuss what they think will happen next, or about the history of characters, we may never learn. For example, there's a popular theory that Willy Wonka is a serial killer.
Personally, I think trying to predict what will happen next is fun, it really makes you think about the story and everything we know about the characters so far. And it feels really good when you find out your theory is proven right. I remember how psyched I was when a theory I had about Rumple's mother on "Once Upon a Time" was proven right. Fans rejoiced when R + L= J was confirmed; a theory that has been around since 1996.
However, I think it's important not to completely lose your marbles if a theory you support is proven wrong.
Currently, one of the franchises to have to biggest fanbase is Game of Thrones, both the tv show and the books that the show is based on. But since the wait between seasons is long, and between books even longer, that leaves room for a lot of speculation and theories to develop. We had a longer wait than usual between the seventh and the final season of the show. And since the show's ahead of the books, it's impossible for anyone to predict what's going to happen.
We only have one episode left, and already so many theories have been disproven. Fans were overall pleased with the first two episodes of the eighth season. But after the Battle of the Long Night fans became pretty divided (other than the fact that the lighting was terrible, that we agree on). We all thought that Jon was gonna have an epic showdown with the Night King, that didn't happen.
This season has gotten fans pretty angry. While I do agree that the quality of the show's writing has gone downhill, I still feel like there are a good amount of fans who hate the season mostly because their theories were proven wrong. I haven't seen this much anger since the Last Jedi came out since all our theories about Rey's parents were wrong. I understand the frustration with being wrong, my theories on Cersi's death were wrong. But that's not the sole reason to call something trash, and you defiantly shouldn't attack the writers/artist and sent them hate mail personally attacking them.
Accepting that your well thought out theories mean opening up to other ideas of how the story goes rather than staying in a narrow-minded viewpoint. And if you really hate the ending of something, you can always write fan fiction. It never disappoints you because it ends the way you want, and it's just fun to write.
